Henk van de Goor's Bloggers@large

Here is a cool thing I stumbled upon: Wubi.

Wubi is an unofficial Ubuntu installer for Windows users that will bring you into the Linux world with a single click. Wubi allows you to install and uninstall Ubuntu as any other application. If you heard about Linux and Ubuntu, if you wanted to try them but you were afraid, this is for you.

In other words: if you have been wanted to try out Ubuntu, but you are afraid about repartitioning your harddisk and you want better performance than running Linux in a virtual PC (usually sucks unless you have a high-end PC), then this is the tool for you.

Wubi installs Ubuntu on a virtual disk. It's a big file and Linux is run from within that file. This means no partitioning is needed but you still can run and install applications as with a real installation. It also means you can uninstall it whenever you want and reclaim your harddisk space. Another benefit is that you do not have to download, burn and boot from the Ubuntu CD as the installer downloads the CD image and boots from that. Also useful if you have a ultra portable laptop or a PC without a CD-player.

Related to this project (in the sense that it is similar), is UNetbootin:

UNetbootin is a tool that allows you to install various Linux distributions (Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva, OpenSuSE, Debian, ArchLinux) from a Windows or a Linux desktop over the internet (i.e., you don't need to burn the Ubuntu, Fedora, ... CDs). Unlike the Ubuntu installation with Wubi, real partitions are created during the installation. In the end, you have a dual-boot system (Linux/Windows or Linux/Linux).

As the description tells you, you will be partitioning your harddisk when you use this tool.

Either way: both options are interesting if you like to mess around a bit with Linux. So go ahead and give it a spin.

One of the classic problems with releasing software is making the mistake to give people a tight deadline and then work towards that deadline. About 2 weeks ago I wrote about the upcoming version of Ubuntu Linux, which was scheduled to come out yesterday, well it's not out yet. When you go over to their website the counter says 00 days but you won't find it; just the Beta is there. Canonical, the software support organization behind Ubuntu are going to put seven releases (versions) of Ubuntu out, and it's no shame they won't make it in time. It's just so "Vista-like" to announce a date and then not make it. It will be interesting to see if the final version of Gutsy Gibbon can be found on the Ubuntu website tonight...

When I migrated my server at home (zion.demon.nl) to this server at Site5, I realized that I now had one spare computer left to mess around with. So, what to do with it? Well, that was an easy question: put Linux on it! My main PC which I use for games, downloading etc. etc. is a Windows XP machine and is actually dual-boot; I have Vista Ultimate on it as well. And even though I use Vista less than 1 hour a month I don't really want to put Linux on that PC. Although the idea of making it triple-boot is appealing ;-) So instead I went over to the Ubuntu website, downloaded the latest Beta version of Ubuntu 7.10, codename "Gutsy Gibbon" and burned a CD. Then I wiped my old server, disconnected the faulty 60gb drive that caused my Ubuntu 6.06 LTS to die (I had it configured using LVM - bad choice!) and started the install.

The installer was straight forward as is always the case with Ubuntu. About 20 minutes later I was staring are the GDM login screen and logged on. I was immediately greeted by the "restricted driver" dialog that told me my hardware would perform better if I used the restricted Nvida drivers, which I did. It worked great, right away. Compiz Fusion is enabled by default and gives you lots of desktop visual effects (see video below). Before configuring Beryl or some other 3D desktop was a pain in the ass and way to geeky. But with 7.10 it will become mainstream. I also noticed that it does NOT make your PC slower as all effects are handled by your GPU.

So what makes 7.10 so interesting? To me it represents a step forward in the development of Linux for regular users that want a good alternative to winblows. It is easier in use and it is getting more mainstream with each release. 7.10 will have the latest version of the Gnome desktop (2.20), has better drivers, better laptop support, easier installation of printers (supposedly automagically), better graphics (including dynamic resizing of your desktop and support for beamers etc..), and loads of other cool things.

However, after I installed the KDE desktop as well, I couldn't get Gnome (or better Compiz) to work properly anymore so I better wait for the final release and stick with Gnome. You can still run KDE apps anyway. For now I reverted to Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn).

Yep folks, Ubuntu is here to stay and rock your world... Uh.. your PC...

Gutsy Gibbon Goodness

One of the most annoying things about maintaining your own webserver (the pages you see right now are being served from my own Linux Webserver), is the fact that hackers try to get into the system all the time. Because Linux is inherently a lot safer than Windows, those attempts (usually) fail and should not worry you too much. However, not gaining access is one thing, but the fact that some hackers use so-called 'brute-force attacks' means that they can use up a lot of your bandwidth (traffic) and also cause your logfiles to grow real big and may slow down your server a lot.

Last night I was leisurely browsing through my logfiles and found out that my FTP log was unusually big (I only use FTP to allow Blogger.com access and for some people to download stuff). I also saw at the date of my current ftp.log that it was updated less then 2 seconds ago. When I used ftpwho I saw that some bozo was trying to get into the server using some dictionary. Really annoying! A quick check of my SSH logfile also revealed several break in attempts:

Apr 1 14:40:58 zion sshd[21357]: Invalid user anonymous from 201.234.180.34
Apr 1 14:40:58 zion sshd[21357]: reverse mapping checking getaddrinfo for c2012
34180-34.impsat.com.co failed - POSSIBLE BREAKIN ATTEMPT!
Apr 1 14:40:58 zion sshd[21357]: (pam_unix) check pass; user unknown
Apr 1 14:40:58 zion sshd[21357]: (pam_unix) authentication failure; logname= ui
d=0 euid=0 tty=ssh ruser= rhost=201.234.180.34
Apr 1 14:41:00 zion sshd[21357]: Failed password for invalid user anonymous fro
m 201.234.180.34 port 53724 ssh2
Apr 1 14:41:05 zion sshd[21360]: Invalid user passwd from 201.234.180.34
Apr 1 14:41:06 zion sshd[21360]: reverse mapping checking getaddrinfo for c2012
34180-34.impsat.com.co failed - POSSIBLE BREAKIN ATTEMPT!

Given that ProFTPD and SSH do not have any IP-blocking capabilities (that is: locking out an IP-address after too many attempts) I had to look for a tool that does this for me. I say it once again: Google is your friend, and about 2 minutes later I had found a good tool that just kicks and bans every bozo that tries to hack his way into my FTP or SSH-server: Fail2ban.

This tool, that users of Debian based systems can use out-of-the-box simply by using "apt-get install fail2ban", scans your logfiles like /var/log/pwdfail or /var/log/apache/error_log and bans IP's that have too many password failures. It updates firewall rules automatically to reject the IP address.

I tested it and it works very well. So as of yesterday all bozo's that try to gain access to my server, will wind up in one big IP blacklist.

Damn, restoring and installing my Website is quit a lot of work! I decided to put my stuff back up as much as I could, but some things might not work untill I have time to fix it. Right now for whatever reason the mod_rewrite module of my server doesn't seem to work, and that sucks.

On top off things I am so swamped and busy because of work, that I had not enough time to try and configure everything in the right way. Darn it! And there are so many interesting things to blog about at the moment! Elections in Holland (in 1 week), Bush in trouble in the US etc. etc.

Anyway, I will be trying to fix stuff this weekend I guess!

Just to let you all know: this Friday I added my own Wiki to my webserver. After I tried PHPwiki (which was very hard to configure and looked real ugly) I decided to install the #1 Wiki: MediaWiki. This is the same software that they run for Wikipedia and lot's of other Wiki sites. I am going to dedicate my ZionWiki to the Serendipity (s9y) Blogging software and a bit about Ubuntu Linux. The Serendipity website has its own Wiki, but I think it doesn't look good like a Wiki and I find it hard to search and find stuff. And as long as the authors don't object (afterall: it's more exposure) I think it's cool. By the way: there is a really good website that helps you decide what Wiki software you want to run: WikiMatrix. So the next few days I will start to fill my Wiki with as much handy information as I can. I also will need to learn how to put certain features in it as well.

In the mean time: feel free to contribute to ZionWiki!

Ladies and gentlemen: mission (almost) accomplished. I have migrated my webserver for 98% percent to Linux. I hope you notice the improvement in speed when pages are served to you. Also this setup is a lot more robust and safer then the old WAMP (Windows, Apache, MySql, PHP) setup I had. Especially lately I had a lot of times where I logged on to my server and found that my Apache had crashed and automatically restarted. Usually a sign of problems or - worse - hackers trying to crash or hack my server. The migration also allowed me to upgrade to the latest version of PHP and gives some other benfits that Linux has to offer. I really enjoy the fact that I now can use Webmin and stuff like SFTP and last but not least: SSH access. This gives me a secure way and total (remote) control of my server.

It took me long enough to set this all up, so I am proud to say that I succeeded so far. If you search my blog, you will find many entries in which I rant about my frustration setting it all up. In the process I must say that I have become a big fan of Ubuntu. This Debian based Linux flavour is really very flexible and easy to maintain.

So what's left to-do? Basically there are just two things left: setting up my FTP in the right way, and - probably the most difficult task - setting up streaming audio for my streaming radiostation: iLounge. For now I just stream the station, but the whole interface for doing requests is offline due to the fact it's still running on my old server. So if anyone knows of a Linux based streaming audio system that has the same benefits as SAM Broadcaster (PHP-based built-in interface/website), please let me know!

(To be continued...)